They begin with the puppet stuff, which is kind of dumb and doesn't fit the song, which is possibly my favorite dance song of all time, "Groove Is In the Heart." Joey looks like he's put some weight back on, or maybe his pants don't fit very well. There's a weird breakdown in the middle, and I'm not sure what Joey is doing. It's kind of cool, but doesn't seem very cha-cha. Overall: weird. I don't know if I used that word enough in that paragraph. Let's see what the judges thought. Carrie Ann thinks Joey is a crowd pleaser, but there wasn't enough cha-cha. AGREED! She thinks he took breaks for the fun stuff but never got back to the real moves. Len thinks it was too far away from the roots of the dance, and ended up being more like a freestyle. AGREED! Bruno thought it was "an odd cha-cha." AGREED! Tom points out that Joey and Kym have united the judges. I'm sure those two will make up the points on the freestyle -- I expect amazing things from them, although expectations could work against them. Anyway, for the cha-cha, they get a 9, 8, and 9. They don't look surprised after the lambasting they got in person.

It's time to bring Laila and Maksim back for their freestyle. I read that Laila will have to get knee surgery when the season ends, and maybe that's why she's wearing bedazzled sneakers this week, but it's not a good look for her. She has really muscular legs anyway, as an athlete, and flats don't do her any favors, especially when she's wearing short shorts. I do enjoy some of her retro '80s moves, like the running man. They do a modified sort of lift, and I'm not sure why, but something seems to be missing from the routine. Laila tries to work it, but the spark is gone somehow, in my opinion. And then at the end, Laila rips Maksim's T-shirt off him. Ugh. Gross. He loves himself SO MUCH! Tom jokes that the best acting he's seen so far was Maksim pretending he didn't want his shirt ripped off. I love Tom. The crowd goes nuts. Oh, don't encourage him.